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Liberals poised for upset in New Brunswick election

The Liberal leader is a young rookie who has been leading opinion polls for months. The Tory incumbent is an economy-first kind of guy bent on digging for underground oil-and-gas riches.

And the NDP leader just can’t seem to get a fair shake.

With the next federal election still a year away, voters in New Brunswick are set to decide Monday on a provincial race with a similar story line that looks set to end with 32-year-old Brian Gallant, the photogenic, fluently bilingual Liberal leader, taking power in a troubled province.

New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant heads to his campaign bus in Dieppe, N.B., on Thursday. (Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

That would be a stunning defeat for the Progressive Conservative incumbent premier, David Alward, a former provincial cabinet minister who came to power in 2010.

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In a debate Thursday night, Alward admitted the last four years have been “difficult times and we haven’t been able to do everything that we committed to do,” but said his party has a clear plan for the future.

That plan has been presented as a sort of referendum on whether to open up New Brunswick’s shale gas reserves to drilling, a sore point in the province that has seen violent clashes between protesters and police over the last year. Gallant has promised a moratorium on drilling until more testing and study can be completed.

The matter is both substantive and strategic. Exploiting natural resources may be the easiest and quickest way to create jobs and attract investment in a province that needs both. But it’s also a path strongly supported by four-in-10 voters, said Don Mills, president of Corporate Research Associates.

But green lights for shale gas may not be enough to offset the low approval rating of Alward and his party.

“It was a long shot because the differential (between the PC party and the Liberals) was pretty significant,” Mills said. “We had it at 19 points in August with three weeks left in the election. That’s a big gap to make up in an election when the majority of people are dissatisfied with your performance as a government.”

Gallant hasn’t had to do much to maintain his party’s opinion poll lead, but he has made a number of headline-grabbing moves.

Among them was the early edict that his caucus would be required to follow a strict pro-choice line on votes in the legislature. If abortion is a sensitive issue across Canada, it is more so in New Brunswick, where the only private practice offering the service — the Morgentaler Clinic — closed over the summer. What’s more, provincial rules require women in search of an abortion to have two doctors agree that it is medically necessary and restrict specialists to performing the procedure.

While it is a side issue in an economy-focused campaign, it has invited comparisons with Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who dropped in to lend his support to Gallant.

Trudeau has also imposed a controversial pro-choice line in his caucus. He has also been attacked as too young and too inexperienced. He’s also taken a consistent lead in opinion polls over Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who counts New Brunswick as his party’s beach head in Atlantic Canada.

“(Trudeau) sees the opportunity of picking up eight-to-10, and maybe all 12 seats here,” Mills said. “That’s going to be material for him as he tries to rebuild the party.”

The NDP, led by Dominic Cardy, is running a distant third in the race. Mills said Gallant’s Liberals have been eating into NDP support throughout the campaign.

“(Gallant) doesn’t have a lot of experience — let’s be honest. It’s hard to have a lot of experience at 32 no matter what you do,” he said. “I think what people are saying is that if you look at what’s happened with an experienced leader, what are the risks? In the end, it’s really about voting the government out, not voting the government in.”

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